


One Body Two Minds

by TheEarlyKat



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Anders Week, No Anders without Justice, Steeled Hearts Universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6732943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEarlyKat/pseuds/TheEarlyKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shorts from Anders Week following each prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Justice Day - Amygdala Enigma

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The amygdala is the part of the brain that handles memories and emotions, and sends information to the hypothalamus for further bodily reactions to the outside stimuli (ie heart rate, respiratory rate, fight-or-flight response). It also contributes to the feelings you get in your gut when you’re uneasy. There’s been talk of how Justice and Anders are or are not able to communicate since their merging, and I’m of the mind that Anders can’t hear Justice and Justice can’t hear Anders because their thoughts are essentially the same. What Anders feels, Justice feels, and what Justice feels, Anders feels. But that little feeling in the lower gut, the one that tells you that you should be doing something when you’re not, that something’s not right, ect, is Justice.
> 
> So here’s the ficlet to explain my thinking.

The Wounded Coast was aptly named, Anders mused, and an audible grumble left his lips when he picked a stone embedded between his toes. He let the water from the beach wash it clean, hissing at the sharp sting of salt, and healed the torn skin in the same breath. The cold silt beneath his feet soothed the nerves still signaling damage and he buried his feet in the sediment. It tickled against bare skin and when the swash rushed up the shore to wet it the silt tumbled over in the backwash, tugging his feet with it, and making his legs feel almost weightless.

It was beautiful.

The day was beautiful. The sun was in full force but the winds snapping insistently at his clothing kept him cool. It smelled strongly of fish, salt, and rotting kelp and eggs as the tide went out, revealing the softer sands that contrasted harshly with the jagged trails the coast was named for. Even stronger was the sound - loud, heavy crashes of the waves slamming into the cliffs just beyond, thundering out the tide on every beat both on the rock and inside Anders’ chest. There was power in the way the water curled up the cliff, reaching for the tops it could never hope to catch and so eroding the soil away to bring them down to the sea instead.

The bloody stone in his boot had to ruin it all.

It poked and prodded and took his mind away from the way the ocean stretched on for miles and miles, a green so deep it almost seemed its own impossible color. The pinch between his toes brought the mind the salt and sand clinging to his skin and the way it itched. For all the mages that hadn’t yet seen the ocean, it almost seemed like a mercy they wouldn’t have to experience the way it made his clothes tight and -

“It’s not so bad,” Anders said. He wiggled his toes in the sand for a moment longer until a twist of his stomach had him pulling them out of the mounds he’d dug and brushing them free of sticking sand. Agitation was quick to come at the sand still clinging to his skin and Anders let the tide wash them away. He rose to his feet and pat his trousers dry with a weak fire spell, fingertips glowing blue as Justice helped. The damp would dry his clothes tight and crinkled and the fabric would scratch at his skin unless he-

Anders chuckled. “So if I jump in the pond you’ll be alright with it since there’s no saltwater, right?”

A restlessness had him walking from the beach before he could put his shoes back on. Anders withstood the urge to hurry back to the clinic to put them on. His patients could wait a minute longer if only to protect his newly healed feet from another rock. Justice would never let him hear the end of it if he cut his foot again on the way back.


	2. Ship Day - One Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Handers will always be my favorite ship. Pining will always be my favorite trope. Pining Handers will always be the death of me.

It was just for one night. That’s what he told himself, at least. One night, one indulgence, and he was done, finished. Static ran down Anders’ arms and he scratched at the skin of his arms. A lie, he knew, and the thought wasn’t entirely his own. It hadn’t ended with Karl - Anders thought he’d never be able to love again, not when everything he loved was taken, torn, tossed, away from him, his family, his cat, his first lover - and it wouldn’t end with Hawke. Not when some part of him still craved the light touches and the lingering gazes. Not when heat pooled just beneath his skin at the call of his name. Not when the promise he’d told himself since that night at the Chantry - never again, never again would he let the world have something to take away and beat him down with one more time - was slowly filling with holes and crumbling at the edges.

It was just for one night. That’s what he told himself as he left Hawke’s manor the second time. It hadn’t even been a night, truly, and there was no indulgence this time if he really twisted the night’s events. Hawke was injured and Anders was the healer and if he’d let his hands wander the expanse of the warrior’s skin and rest just moments longer than absolutely necessary, then it had been to search for any lasting damages. A like, he knew, and it was entirely his own thoughts now. Justice had nothing to say when Anders only fought him on the matter. And what could he say? Anders could have something that could be taken away because he was free.

It was just for one night. One night among many. Anders stretched and felt Hawke against his back, warm and solid, and Anders rolled over to press himself into the space Hawke made when he’d curled around the mage sometime after he’d fallen asleep. He tossed his arm around Hawke’s waist and trailed his fingers along his spine, drawing out a pattern. A number. He’d been counting the nights, if only to remember that this was real. Time was nonexistent in the Fade, but here, in the real, living world, he had this. He had Hawke. He had last night, this night, and every night after, and each would be a new one.


	3. Escape Day - The (Kin)Loch Ness Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if some of the ways the templars kept the mages from swimming was by creating a tale of a monster that lived in the lake? What if Anders never planned the swim to land?

Cold sunk into his skin at the first lap of lake water and Anders had to steel himself to keep from yelping and backpedaling out of the water. The templars begrudgingly allowed this one freedom for the mages and he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of taking it away. He couldn’t draw their attention, and that meant suffering the icy temperatures of the lake. Anders wedged his feet into the muddy bottom and held firm against the next wake.

It was difficult to tell what the depths held. Some kind of algae rubbed over his feet with each gentle wave, slimy and altogether uncomfortable, like a sort of caress from one of the older enchanters with their clammy hands. He saw birds, occasionally, when he found a window when he snuck into the higher quarters accessible only to the harrowed mages to watch their flock and fly wherever birds went to. There must have been something in the lake to catch their interest if they gathered in the water. Anders couldn’t imagine they’d like getting their feet wet if only to rest.

He also couldn’t imagine the giant sea serpent the senior mages whispered about. The templars probably put the idea in their minds about the monster to keep the Circle’s occupants from swimming. As if the miles of open water weren’t enough of a deterrent in the first place, the templars had to make up lies about impossibly large animals. Anders gave the water a sharp look. A sea serpent wouldn’t scare him. He could shock the creature before it even formed the idea that he might make a nice snack. Maybe he could grab some seaweed and make a harness and ride the thing across the way.

His chuckle turned into a shriek when something scaly brushed against his foot, rougher and more alien than the algae he’d grown accustomed too. The sudden noise brought the attention of the templars from the mages skipping stones towards him and Anders jumped further into the lake. The scaly something followed him and he jumped again. A templar shouted something, Irving shouted another, and Anders looked up from his frantic search of the water to find a handful of templars reaching for swords and mages calling on magic.

He’d risk the sea serpent.


	4. Early Years Day - Escapade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders’ time in the Circle before his final escape had to have been filled with pranks.

“If someone doesn’t see this missing from the kitchens, they’ll definitely notice the smell,” Karl complained. He adjusted the wrappings around the fish in attempt to muffle to smell with hesitant pulls to the corners of the package, wary of the liquid seeping through. He made a face, wisps of a beard twitching when his mouth curled in disgust when his fingers touched a wet spot. “Why do I have to hold it?”

“Because I-” Anders began, skipping ahead to grab the knob of the door at the end of hall. He pulled it out with a flourish and smoothed back the hairs that fallen out of his queue with the twirl and finished with a grin. “-have to open the doors.”

Karl frowned at the complacency that settled the uneasy roll of his stomach at the excuse, for an excuse it was. They were newly harrowed, they were beyond this sort of activity. There was a sort of respectability expected of them and stealing a fish prepared for the night’s meal to stuff it under the mattress of the Knight-Commander’s bed was most certainly not that. Yet, Karl couldn’t find the argument to dis-way Anders. Or to be the one to open doors. He was stuck holding the fish.

“Door’s open.”

Karl grumbled a word about patience under his breath and glanced away at the wink Anders sent him as he passed. He wouldn’t encourage the younger mage with his flush and he schooled his expression into a frown. Anders jumped ahead of him, a bounce in his step, and landed in front of the heavy door hiding Greagoir’s quarters from the rest of the tower.

“How did you even know how to get here?” It was spoken out of awe more than a real need for an answer. In truth, Karl rarely wanted to know how Anders did anything. The less he knew, the less he could give the templars when they inevitably showed up to catch the two of them, and the less they had to go on to find a fitting punishment, giving Anders the time to think of a new plan - and the templars always showed up.

Anders pulled in the door and was shoved back when the door swept open with a push from the other side. Anders bit back his surprised yelp but Karl had little success, and the Knight-Commander’s attention was quickly on the both of them rather than the report in his hand.

Anders giggled. “Dinner’s here?” The templar frowned and Anders scrambled to his feet, backpedaling wildly until he got his balance beneath him. His skinny frame rushed past Karl, pausing only briefly to grab a hold of his hand and yank him along. The fish dropped to the floor with a wet sound. Greagoir’s following cry of outage unsettled him more than the squelch. “Run, run!”

Karl didn’t know when he’d started laughing, but he was sure it sometime after Anders began.


	5. Cat Day - If You Give A Mage A Mouse

A decent meal, a pretty girl, and the right to shoot lightning at fools. Anders made a note to correct his personal philosophy and add the amendment ‘with a cat’. Just some odd months since he’d had Nathaniel take Ser Pounce to Delilah’s place for safekeepings when the Warden-Commander told him the Keep wasn’t safe for a cat. The tabby could protect himself, Anders had argued, but even nasty claws and bared teeth couldn’t keep away blight-sickness. Anders saw reason after the fact, but it didn’t make the separation any easier. He missed the texture of fur between his fingers and the heat of tiny body against his own. He missed tripping over himself when the cat wound around his legs and rubbed up on his leather greaves. He missed having something to talk to that wouldn’t interrupt to call him senseless or brash or 'demon’.

“Because only demons would turn you away, isn’t that right?” Anders cooed. He heated what little was left of the thick stew some patient brought down earlier, and though the pot stood close to the door that blocked off his personal sleeping quarters from the rest of the Darktown clinic, all knew it was first for those that wandered in for warmth and healing during the day. Anders’ stomach growled at the smell of it and licked his thumb clean of the stew that spilled over the edge of the chipped pot when he placed it on the table for the cat.

The black and white cat twitched an ear in interest and sniffed at the bowl. Anders made a soft sound in the back of his throat and ran a hand along its spine, biting the inside of his cheek when the cat stretched into the pet to keep from making another embarrassing noise. Someone was bound to come in looking for his magic or his herbs and he had a reputation as Darktown’s only outed mage and resident healer to be seen fawning over a cat. Yet the fur under his hand was full and soft and everything he remembered, and the flick of the tail against his wrist sent him sitting fast. He wiped at his eyes.

There were real tears when he woke up to a dead mouse set on the table the next morning.


	6. AU Day - Let Sleeping Cats Lay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My favorite au will still always be Steeled Hearts. I’m disapointed that I never did more with it, but it was fun to come back to it for today’s Anders Week topic. And it has cats. For the android au I’ll never finish.

“Hawke.” Anders looked beyond the warning flashing across his visionary screens to search the manor for the mechanic. His mechanic, as he had no one else to come to for repairs and routine maintenance. The layout of the house would not display properly with the malfunction taking up the majority of his sight but it was easy to walk the halls of the expansive home to find the room the man was currently situated. There were many repairs he’d needed in the past, his systems used to the constant updates and upgrades from the Kinloch Company. The damp and dirt of Darktown was not conducive for proper working condition and many of his parts had been trader for lesser quality but hardier equipment. They needed constant cleaning to remain in use with his higher functioning AI.

There was a single door at the top of the stairs and Anders paused before it long enough to knock once. He opened it and strode into the room. “Hawke. I am overheating.”

“Of course you are.” The man sorted through a pile of mismatched bolts on the workbench pressed up against the wall. Containers were nailed higher up above it and Hawke dug through the odds and ends for a specific shape. A shoulder bolt, Anders named after a second of examination, and he heard it clink into a container before he saw Hawke toss it. External flow of information was lagging.

“Hawke.”

Garrett pat his hands free of rust and oil on his pants and shoved his chair out from the desk. “You’re overheating - I got it. Come on, take a seat.” He rose, leaving the chair open, and Anders sank into it. He cut off battery life on his lower half and felt the joints in his knees lock in response. His fans whirred. “You sound like a cat crawled up and died in you.”

Anders head snapped up sharply to glare at him and a flash of blue overtook the usual brown LED’s at the rush of power. “I wouldn’t let anything such as that happen and you know it.” Hawke raised his hands in apology and Anders watched him sharply for another moment before dropping his gaze to the floor. The man folded his arms across his chest.

“Anders.” The android let the whirring of his overworked cooling system answer for him. “Why are you overheating again?” A sound rattled in his throat to mimic a cough and Anders shifted in the chair. Hawke only signed and pulled a box of tools from beneath his bed. It was more heavily enforced than the box containing the set for the automobiles he worked on during the day and for good reason. Equipment tailored for more delicate use, tightening smaller cables and working between a fragile exoskeleton made of lightweight metal to encase the complicated inner workings of all mages. Once, they had been used on the model Hawke’s father named Bethany before he quit his job at the powerplant in Kirkwall. It was Garrett’s now, and he used it on Anders. “I’m going to open you up, and you’re going to tell me how many cats you’ve been letting sleep on you.”

“They’re cold in the night,” he defended. He turned in the chair to allow Hawke better access to the notch in his lower abdomen, his own sort of navel he supposed after a brief thought for comparison, and pulled his shirt off to open his chest cavity to clean his fan. His hands were always gentle as they searched out every particular issue. Anders could see the nozzle of his compressed air can and its complimentary brush in his hand as the warning flashing across his eyes finally dimmed at the attention it was receiving. “They enjoy the heat.”

“There won’t be much of it if they keep shedding all over you,” Hawke grumbled, his annoyance muffled from where he sat hunched forward to find the fur clogging his systems. There were no sensors embedded within his skeleton but Anders shivered all the same when Hawke let air whistle across his fan. Another moment of Hawke’s hand inside him and the pressure inside his chest lessened. Garrett finished unwinding a clump of grey and orange fur and tossed it in the trash. “You want a full shut down or just a restart before I put everything everything away?”

“Restart is fine,” Anders answered, already closing the sheets of metal back over his processors. His fans sounded more gentle and buzzed pleasantly against his side. Light played against his skin while the rest of his systems rebooted. “Thank you.”

“Thank me - that’s right,” Hawke said, pointing at him with the brush. “I’ll start making Fenris clean you and he’ll just rip the fan right out.”

“You’d be required to find a new one if that were to happen.” He’d done the same when he needed a new battery an Anders was sure the same would happen again.

“I can still say it,” he muttered. Anders rose to his feet. “No more sleeping with cats!”

“They come to me,” Anders shouted back.


End file.
